Nobody Gets The Girl (27 page)

"I swear to God that was the most serious
thing I've ever done," said Richard. "I still don't know if it was
the right thing or the wrong thing, but it's the thing I did. I
have to live with it. I didn't mean to sound insensitive."

"So, he's dead," said Amelia. "Has Rex Monday
taken over the world yet?"

"In 100 percent seriousness, I killed him,
too."

Amelia looked back at him, surprised.
"How?"

"With the same gun," said Richard. "And a
time machine."

"OK," she said. "I might need some more
details later."

"I may have to draw a diagram."

"And you came all the way to Mars to tell
me?" said Amelia.

"I captured Rex Monday's space machine.
Getting here was no big deal, except for the part where I went
insane. It's just a hop and a skip back to Earth with this thing,"
said Richard. "I've come to take you home."

"No," said Amelia.

"I thought you might say that. Look, your
father's dead. The whole war you've fought since childhood is over.
You can be free."

"I am free," said Amelia. "Let's be serious.
I can't imagine I'm popular back on Earth right now. I must be
public enemy number one."

"Rail Blade is," said Richard. "But you don't
have to go back and live the life of a superhero. You could retire
and live normally, quietly."

"Richard, take a look around you," said
Amelia. "You are standing in the ruins of a lost Martian
civilization."

"Wow, yeah, I kind was wondering about that.
I mean, I thought maybe you had done it for decoration, but, wow,
this is some kind of news, isn't it?"

"Do you know what you were walking in when I
found you?"

"Dust?"

"A canal. The planet is covered with them.
Ancient, empty, bone-dry canals, filled with thousands of ceramic
boats."

"Oh my God," said Richard. "This is like some
kind of science fiction novel come true. I mean, this is huge."

"No," said Amelia. "This is fiction."

"What do you mean?"

"This is my father's fiction," said Amelia.
"There are canals on Mars because it was something that captured
his imagination as a kid. There are ancient ruins here for the same
reason that Sarah could fly and I could pilot that spaceship just
by telling the steel frame where to go. There were never any
Martians. These things are the evidence that this is my father's
universe. And it's broken."

"Broken?"

"It's twisted. Corrupted. A parody of what
reality must have been. We'll never know what Mars would have been
like if my father hadn't triggered that bomb."

"I hadn't considered that," said Richard. "I
guess I see what you're saying."

"Then you have to understand why I can't go
back to Earth. It's too dangerous."

"Ah. Now that's the leap I'm not making in my
head."

"Richard, do you know what I'm doing as we're
standing here talking?"

"Looking good," said Richard.

"That's sweet, but no. Right now, even as we
speak, I'm touching the entire planet. There are vast quantities of
iron here, that's why the surface is red. And I'm slowly, steadily,
driving the bulk of these iron ores to the core of Mars."

"That's quite a hobby," said Richard.

"This isn't a joke," said Amelia. "There's
already a small rocky iron core at the heart of Mars, but it's
cold, silent. I'm augmenting it by adding the surface ores, and I'm
vibrating it now, warming it. It's a slow process. But in another
decade or so, I'll have stoked it to a white-hot state. Do you know
what this means?"

"Spell it out for me," said Richard.

"Once the core is excited, Mars will have a
magnetic field. One reason Mars doesn't have much atmosphere is
that it doesn't have a magnetic field like Earth's to protect it
from solar winds. The high atmospheric particles can't be held by
Martian gravity and get swept into space. I can put a stop to
this."

"So what you're saying is, compasses will
work on Mars."

"That's a trivial ramification, but yes."

"And it will have an atmosphere?"

"Within our lifetimes. The heated core will
once again drive volcanic action. Subsurface gasses and water will
be injected into the atmosphere as volcanoes begin to flow. And I'm
stripping the iron in the rusty soil from oxygen atoms. It's where
I got the atmosphere for this room."

"Within our lifetimes? What happens when you
stop heating the core?"

"I don't know," said Amelia. "It should take
thousands of years to cool down to the point where the magnetic
field will fail. I figure it will be humanity's problem by
then."

"Wow. I guess I shouldn't have been so
flippant with that hobby comment. This is pretty impressive,
Amelia. Where did you get the grass and plants?"

"And bumblebees, and worms, and dozens of
other creepy crawlies. Father had made some do-it-yourself
ecosystem kits when he was designing his domes. They fit nicely
into the spaceship, along with about three years worth of
MREs."

"Meals Ready to Eat?" said Richard. "I'm
surprised your father never invented meals in a pill."

"Oh, I have those, too. But in another month
or so, I should be able to start harvesting vegetables from the
gardens."

As she spoke, the room grew darker. The sun
dipped ever closer to the horizon, and without a high atmosphere to
play against, the light faded away at a surprising pace. In
moments, it would be night.

"Sounds like you've got it all planned out,"
said Richard. "But, it still doesn't answer my big question. Why
are you on Mars?"

"I've crossed a line, Richard," said Amelia.
"I've stretched my powers to a planetary scale. I'm never going to
be normal."

"But normal is just—"

"Let me rephrase that. I
am
normal.
This is my normal. I need a world to touch, to play with. And I
think Father gave me Mars."

"Gave you Mars?"

"Think about it. It's a perfect match. It's a
world covered in rust, iron oxides, waiting for someone to come
along and free up the oxygen. It's a world that could support an
atmosphere if it had a magnetic field, and I have the power to kick
the core into motion. It's a world where canals that have never
held water are already built, as if waiting for me to come along
and fill them. On a more symbolic level, Mars is a world
symbolizing war and violence. I am a weapon. I was born to be an
instrument of death. Mars is the world where I can change from a
sword into a plowshare."

Amelia sat down by the fountain. It was
crafted from the same blue porcelain as the boat in the canal. It
bore an eerie resemblance to the fountain on her father's estate.
The look on her face was almost devoid of emotion.

"This is a broken universe. This is a broken
world. And I am my father's broken child. This is home."

"You don't sound happy about it."

"I don't know what happiness has to do with
it," she said.

"I know what happiness has to do with it,"
said Richard. "That's why I'm here. I've come to Mars to find
happiness."

"And instead you found me," said Amelia. By
now the light had faded to the point that her face was nearly
hidden by the shadows.

"That's what I mean," said Richard. "I came
to Mars to find you. Because you make me happy."

Richard sat down next to her at the fountain.
The feeling of déjà vu grew stronger. "I love you, Amelia."

"Huh," she said. "How desperate are you?"

"Not as desperate as you might think," said
Richard. "But it's pretty simple. I like you because you are
broken. I like the way you've fractured. My God, this is a
no-brainer."

"Really?"

"Really. You're the most serious person I've
ever met. I'm someone who's always treated life as a joke. It must
be true that opposites attract, because I recognize in you
something that I'm missing. You have a certain magnetism, pardon
the pun. It pulled me across umpteen million miles to find
you."

"I can't believe you're saying this," she
said. "Are you trying to trick me into going back to Earth?"

"I've a better idea," he said. "We can stay
here. It will be nice to live on a world where everyone can see me.
And I like the idea of our kids or grandkids waving at the first
spaceships from Earth."

"Kids? You're getting a little ahead of
yourself, Richard."

"Come on. Admit it. You've missed me."

"Yes," she said, softly. "But that still
doesn't give you the right to come in here and start making plans
for our children."

"Sorry," said Richard. "You're right. I
should have brought roses. You deserve a real courtship. Although I
guess moonlight walks holding hands on the beach aren't an option
here."

"There are two moons," said Amelia. "You'll
be able to see them through the windows in a few more minutes.
You'd be surprised how bright they are."

"I may be all surprised out for the day, to
be honest."

"This from a man who's just stepped across
planets in hopes of getting lucky."

"Babe," said Richard, "all my life I've been
lucky."

Above Mars, Phobos and Deimos crept silently
through the void, reflecting the light of a distant sun to cast
shadows on the undiscovered ruins of the world below.

In the bright moonslight, to the eerie
bow-saw drone of wind whipping over a steel dome, two lovers held
hands, and kissed.

EPILOGUE

MEANWHILE

A WOMAN LIMPED
down the steps of the
post office onto a nearly empty New York City sidewalk. Few people
were out this Christmas morning, as a fierce wind whipped through
the streets, blowing snow before it.

As the woman walked through the snow, a cloud
of steam followed her, and a symphony of tiny hisses as the
snowflakes vaporized against her skin.

She took shelter from the wind behind a
dumpster in an alley. She dug around in the dumpster, grunting as
she pulled out a large cooler, the battered green aluminum casing
sporting several bullet holes.

"That you?" asked the cooler as she dropped
it to the ground.

"No," she said, taking a seat on the cooler.
"Just the rats."

"Was there anything waiting?"

"Nope," she said, pulling out a pack of
cigarettes from her coat.

"You sure you have the right P.O. box?"

"The key fit," she said, lighting the tobacco
with a glowing fingertip.

"Are you smoking?" asked the cooler. "Christ,
I'd kill for a smoke."

"You just finished regrowing your lungs and
the first thing you want to do is smoke?" said the woman, who
without any irony took a deep drag from the cancer stick.

"So what next?" asked the cooler.

"We check again next year," said the woman.
"Those are the instructions. If the boss disappears, we keep
checking here until we get further assignments. You in a hurry or
something?"

"If the boss were back in touch, I reckon
he'd whip up some kind of ray or something that would make my arms
'n legs grow back faster," said the cooler.

"You are the last person who should bitch to
me about missing limbs," said the woman, breathing out a cloud of
smoke.

"Don't you ever worry that the boss might be
dead?" asked the cooler.

"He probably has a plan for that," said the
woman. "He has a plan for everything. We haven't heard the last
from him."

A loud sigh escaped from the cooler.

"What?" the woman asked.

"Next time," said the cooler, "he should plan
on robbing some banks."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

To research
Nobody Gets the Girl
,
James Maxey studiously read 1,312,017 comic books, starting in 1973
with a Superman comic book that guest-starred Batgirl. With his
mind warped by a steady diet of four-color pulp fiction, Maxey has
proven unfit to mingle with ordinary folk and survives by doing
work that even carny geeks find degrading, such as writing novels.
His fantasy trilogy of
Bitterwood
,
Dragonforge
, and
Dragonseed
was published by Solaris Books and is currently
available for download on Kindle. For more information about these
and upcoming releases (including a sequel to
Nobody
), check
out his blog at dragonprophet.blogspot.com. Maxey may be emailed at
[email protected].

Enjoyed
NobodyGets the Girl
? Then you
might enjoy another superhero novel, Mur Lafferty’s
Playing For
Keeps
. The shining metropolis of Seventh City is the birthplace
of super powers. The First Wave heroes are jerks, but they have the
best gifts: flight, super strength, telepathy, etc. The Third
Wavers are stuck with the leftovers: the ability to instantly make
someone sober, the power to smell the past, absolute control over
elevators. Bar owner Keepsie Branson has a passive power that
prevents anything in her possession from being stolen. Keepsie and
her friends just aren't powerful enough to make a difference – at
least that's what they've always been told. But when the villain
Doodad slips Keepsie a mysterious metal sphere, the Third Wavers
become caught in the middle of a battle between the egotistical
heroes and the manipulative villains. As Seventh City begins to
melt down, it's hard to tell the good guys from the bad, and even
harder to tell who may become the true heroes.

PLAYING FOR KEEPS

Excerpt

1

The supervillain attacked at the most
inconvenient place and time: right on Keepsie’s walk to work. She
looked into the sky at the costumed combatants and groaned.

“Why did they have to do this on a
Thursday?”

Crowds gathered on the sidewalk to stare up
at the battle, clearly ignorant of the danger. Not to mention
ignorant that they were making her later.